Ferrari boss Fred Vasseur has denied that there is friction between Lewis Hamilton and his race engineer after a tense exchange in the Formula 1 Monaco Grand Prix.
Hamilton lagged home in a distant fifth place in Monte Carlo as a three-place grid penalty for impeding Max Verstappen in qualifying destroyed his podium prospects.
The mistake on the pit wall that prompted Hamilton’s demotion preceded more miscommunication over the radio in the race as he sought to understand his situation.
Having asked whether the leading quartet were a minute up the road, Riccardo Adami proceeded to inform Hamilton about how the battle at the front was unravelling.
“Charles [Leclerc] on Mediums and the McLarens on hards. Lapping 1:16s, very close to each other,” was Adami’s response to the seven-time F1 champion’s question.
That aroused Hamilton to express that Adami hadn’t answered his enquiry, to which he was then told that he was running 48 seconds behind Oscar Piastri’s McLaren.
Hamilton then implored whether his race engineer was “upset” with him on the cooldown lap once the race ended, but his message was met with an apparent silence.
Ferrari explains Adami-Hamilton miscommunication
However, Vasseur has dismissed the notion that there is a problem with how Hamilton and Adami, who worked with Sebastian Vettel and Carlos Sainz, communicate.
“Because when the driver is asking something between Turn 1 and Turn 3, we have to wait [until] the tunnel to reply, to avoid to speak with him during the corners,” Vasseur explained to media including Motorsport Week.
“It’s not that we are sleeping, it’s not that we are having a beer on the pit wall.
“It’s just because we have a section of the track where we agreed before to speak with him, and honestly it’s not a tension that the guy is asking something, he’s between the wall, he’s under pressure, he’s fighting, he’s at 300 kph, he’s keeping the edge between the walls and I’m perfectly fine. When I spoke with him after the race he was not upset at all.”
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